Frederick Scott Archer

In this age of technology when any scene can be digitally reproduced at the press of a button on our mobile phones, it's easy to forget photography's beginnings and the evolution of the process that brought us to this point. Many names have been associated with the invention of photography but, generally, just three names come to the fore: Louis Daguerre, William Henry Fox Talbot and George Eastman of Kodak fame.

One name that certainly won't spring to mind is Frederick Scott Archer, born the son of a Bishop's Stortford butcher in 1813 and, arguably, the man responsible for bringing photography to the masses. But more of him later. First, a brief history of photography.

Since the time of Aristotle (384–322BC) it had been known that rays of light passing through a pinhole would produce an image, the 10th century Arabian scholar Alhazen of Basra describing how to view an eclipse of the sun in a camera obscura – a darkened room with only a pinhole allowing in light. In the 16th century a lens had been fitted to the hole to improve the image, and by the end of that century camera obscura had become smaller and more portable, often being used by artists as an aid to painting.

Fixing the image produced by camera obscura proved a little more difficult, but in 1604 an Italian scientist, Angelo Sala, observed the darkening of certain silver compounds when exposed to the sun. By the 1800s most of the basic optical and chemical principles that make photography possible had been established, and the very first permanent photograph was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833), an inventor and lithographer living in central France. He devised an automatic method of copying line drawings onto lithographic stones by using the power of the sun and pewter plates coated with a mixture of bitumen and lavender oil. In a further experiment he put one of his asphelt coated plates inside a camera obscura, and after a very long exposure managed to record a barely decipherable image.

Further attempts to improve images were not encouraging, but the following year he was contacted by Frenchman Louis Daguerre (1787–1851), a painter who had an interest in recording images. They became partners in 1829 but for the next four years worked separately, reporting their experiments by post. Niépce died of a stroke in 1833 but Daguerre continued to experiment, and in 1839 announced his new photographic process to the French Academy of Sciences. He called his images 'daguerreotypes'.

The secret of his success was a light sensitive material called silver iodide, the images captured on a highly polished surface of silver, plated on a copper sheet. He also solved (by accident) the centuries old problem of 'fixing' the image with a chemical known as sodium thiosulphate. The French government immediately patented his discovery, but although the sharpness and tonal range of daguerreotypes was astounding and enjoyed initial success, they were expensive to produce and the process didn't evolve.

In 1839 a well-educated amateur scientist named William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877), appeared before the Royal Institution of Great Britain to present his negative-positive system. His early experiments had involved placing objects on light-sensitive paper, which was then exposed to the sun to produce silhouettes. But by using two sheets of sensitized paper, one dipped in a concentrated salt solution and then brushed with a silver nitrate solution, he found that by pressing the sheet with the silhouette on it face down on top of another, and exposing it to sunlight under glass, a positive image was reproduced from the negative. He later applied the technique to an image taken by a camera and produced a recognizable picture.

In 1840 his experiments had advanced to recording a latent image on paper – nothing of which could be seen of the exposure until it was chemically developed – and called the process 'calotype' from the Greek words kalos for 'beautiful' and typos for 'impression'. Unlike daguerreotypes, which were one-offs and very expensive to produce, his calotype allowed multiple images to be produced; the only flaw in the process being that images were fuzzy and soft due to poor quality paper.

This problem was overcome in 1847 when Abel Niépce de St Victor, a cousin of Nicéphore Niépce, appeared before the Academy of Sciences in Paris to announce his new process using glass plates coated with an emulsion of silver compound suspended in egg-white. Unlike paper, glass presented no texture problems, and although the freshness of the eggs did affect image quality, the process continued to be used untill a better emulsion was discovered.

In an unrelated experiment in 1846, French scientist Louis Menard discovered that guncotton (cellulose nitrate) could be dissolved in a mixture of ether and alcohol to produce a liquid that dried into a hard, colourless, transparent film. He called the new substance 'collodion' which, shortly after, was adopted by physicians as a water-proof surgical dressing.

The use of collodion as a photographic emulsion was first advanced by a British chemist, Robert Bingham. He discovered that if glass plates were coated evenly with collodion and then sensitized in silver nitrate, they could be exposed in the camera while still damp and developed immediately afterwards. The process became known as wet-plate photography, but exposure times were still long.

Enter now Frederick Scott Archer of Bishop's Stortford, the man who, arguably, made the most important contribution to the development of photography within the first twenty years of its existence.

Born the son of a Bishop's Storford butcher in 1813, he was orphaned at an early age and brought up by distant relatives and friends. As a boy he was apprenticed to a bullion dealer and silversmith in London, where his love of beautiful antique gems and, more especially, coins of all nations led him to the study of numismatics.

He specialized in coin appraisals, but his fascination with their artistic qualities led him into sculpture and eventually his own studio in Henrietta Street, London, where he sculptered busts of the rich and famous – including the Marquis of Northampton, Lord Albert Conyngham, and William Smith, of the National Portrait Gallery.

To aid his work he turned to photography and in 1847 was taught the calotype process by his medical attendant, Dr Hugh W. Diamond. Like many other amateurs he was keen to perfect Fox Talbot's new art-form, although its greatest drawback of long exposure times didn't suit portrait photography. Experimenting with collodion and various other substances to try and perfect an image printed on paper, he was soon devoting all of his time to photography in a studio at the rear of his new house in Great Russell Street, London.

His breakthrough finally came in 1849 when he coated a glass plate with a mixture of collodion and potassium iodide and immersed it in a solution of silver nitrate. This allowed for both the exposure and development to be made within the camera whilst the plate was still wet, and by using glass as the base the result was a near-perfect negative image. More importantly, exposure time was reduced to a matter of seconds as opposed to the many minutes required by Fox Talbot's calotype process.

In May 1850 he wrote an article about the use of pyrogallic acid for The Chemist, and in September that same year showed details and photographs made by the wet-plate collodion process to his friends. But not until March 1851, when he was one hundred percent sure his results were consistent, did he publish a treatise in The Chemist discussing the advantages of collodion and offer up detailed instructions on the process.

His friend, W.J. Taylor, encouraged him to patent the process before publishing it, but Archer had no desire to make money from his discovery. His only concern was to make photography readily available and affordable to the general public. He also dismissed the suggestion that his collodion images should be termed 'Archerotypes'.

Just in case Archer should have second thoughts about applying for a patent, Henry Fox Talbot immediately claimed that any modification of his calotype process was covered by his own patent and issued public warnings that anyone found using the collodion process without first obtaining a licence from him, would be sued.

To back up his threat he brought suits and injunctions against many photographers but in 1854 one man, Martin Silvester La Roche, a London photographer, went to court to defend his right to use the collodion process. The case proved to be a legal milestone. He was found not guilty of infringing Fox Talbot's patent rights and as a result all photography was now free from restriction.

After this legal judgement, Archer published a manual on the process in 1854 entitled: 'The Collodion Process on Glass'. This ultimately made him the inventor of the collodion process because he was the first to publish a formula and method that others could follow. And follow they did; the process becoming so popular that Fox Talbot didn't even bother to renew his calotype patent.

Photographers were quick to see the commercial possibilties of Archer's process, for not only was the collodion wet-plate process cheap, uncomplicated and incredibly quick to perform, the images were as sharp and clear as daguerreotypes and unlimited paper prints could be made from the glass negative. But despite its ease of use the process wasn't perfect. Photographers working outdoors needed to take a portable darkroom laboratory with them, and not without reason was it called the black art. The chemical make-up of collodion was explosive in a confined space if subjected to an open flame, and as a consequence of working in the dark, stains from the silver nitrate turned hands, fingers and clothing black.

Had Scott Archer patented his discovery he would most certainly have been a very rich man, but in the event he died penniless in May 1857, aged 44, and was buried in a paupers' grave in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Afterwards a fund was set up for the benefit of his wife and three children by the Photographic Society, raising £767, and a civil list pension of £50 per annum was awarded.

He did have some of his collodion glass negatives displayed at the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851 alongside calotypes and daguerreotypes, and made significent contributions in optics and camera design, patenting several of his inventions. But not once in his lifetime did he get the credit due to him for making such an advance in photography.

He was though, by nature, a selfless man with no ego to maintain. The British Journal described him as 'a man of very obliging disposition', and an unattributed quote says of him ' A very inconspicuous gentlemen, in poor health, with a somewhat sorrowful look and an angel wife'. Sadly, his 'angel' wife, Fanny, died in March 1858 leaving their three children orphaned. Of these only Alice survived to adulthood, but it is not known if she ever married.


The following tribute was paid to Frederick Scott Archer in Punch magazine, June 1857:

To the Sons of the Sun.
'The inventor of Collodion has died, leaving his invention, unpatented, to enrich thousands, and his family unapportioned, to the battle of life. Now, one expects a photographer to be almost as sensitive as the Collodion to which Mr. Scott Archer helped him. A deposit of silver is wanted (gold will do) and certain faces, now in the dark chamber, will light up wonderfully, with an effect never before equalled by photography. A respectable ancient writes, that the statue of Fortitude was the only one admitted to the Temple of the Sun. Instead whereof, do you, photographers, set up Gratitude in your little glass temples of the sun, and sacrifice, according to your means, in memory of the benefactor who gave you the deity for a household'.

The collodion wet-plate process lasted into the 1880s, but by then the development of an emulsion based on gelatin had emerged. It retained its speed while dry but, more importantly, it could be applied to a flexible backing – rolls of film – instead of glass.

It was George Eastman who revolutionised photography by introducing roll film, and in June 1888 introduced the Kodak – a camera that was light, inexpensive and simple to operate. He also brought photography to the masses in the commercial sense, but it was Frederick Scott Archer's unselflessness that ultimately allowed him and others to prosper.

•This text was inspired by John Meyer of Little Hallingbury, without whom I would have had absolutely no knowledge of Frederick Scott Archer.
Thanks also to Sean MacKenna's fascinating website about Frederick Scott Archer, from which part of this text is drawn. His own research was aided by France Scully Osterman and Mark Osterman, respected historians and modern masters of the wet-plate collodion process. Their own website is certainly worth a visit. www.collodion.org